How many falsehoods is he up to? Over 18,000? He has never told the truth.
All these lies will catch up with Trump (and Pence) hopefully, before the election and his term will end with the strong stabilizing force of President Pelosi.
Are we really surprised? Trump has shown over the past three years that he is disconnected from the truth and by extension, disconnected from reality.
The real tragedy is that he has been protected, coddled and consequently empowered by politicians who know, deep down, that he is ignorant and unstable, but they remain steadfastly loyal because Trump is the vehicle by which they advance their social agenda: more conservative judges at every level of the federal court system; more tax breaks for the corporations and the wealthy and more legislative triumphs for the Christian right, who also ignore who Trump really is as a human being, in order to further their agenda.
Finally, Trump and his collaborators have done more to injure our democracy on a near fatal level than anyone in American history.
As a result of their efforts, it seems that no future American president has to respond to Congressional oversight subpoenas and no future president has to fear asking foreign governments to interfere in our elections.
Let us hope and pray that history records these politicians well. They are traitors.
Fact checking Trump is like spitting into the wind.
Poor man. He has to lie because the truth is unbearable. He is nothing. He is one of those people who thinks "everybody hates me, nobody likes me" and like the normal narcissist, which he is, he has to pump himself up all the time in front of people. I call those that listen to him and believe him myrmidons, blind followers.
Don't say "inaccurate claims". Say "lies".
1
The old joke: How do you know that Trump is telling a lie, his lips are moving. We, the readers of the NY Times know that the majority of the time Trump is not telling the truth. The problem is that most of Trump's followers believe that he's telling the truth and won't listen to any facts showing Trump's lies. Sadly, if the media were to confront Trump on his lies he retaliates against the reporter. I just wish that the media would emphasis Trump's lies while interviewing him, i.e. When Trump says: lt's against the law for Pelosi to rip up his speech. Mr Trump, we can't find any law that states that. Put Trump on the spot. Let Trump know that his lies will be challenged.
4
Some facts: Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter, was given a high paying job to work for a Ukranian oil and gas company with no experience or qualifications. Hunter Biden's partner refused to participate and exited the arrangement. VP Joe Biden threatened to withhold funding to Ukraine unless they fired a high level prosecutor who who was investigating the company Hunter was working for. All coincidence, I think not. Trump does have issues, but there certainly was the appearance of corruption related to the Biden's and Ukraine during Joe Bidens VP tenure.
@G G
Your assertion that Biden withheld funding unless they fired a real corruption fighting prosecutor is completely false.
Please fact check yourself.
The prosecutor who was fired was someone who was looking the other way and NOT fighting corruption. Moreover, the European Union, the World Bank and the U.S. all agreed he had to be fired for INACTION.
5
Mr. Trump is a disgrace, pure and simple. His acquittal was the direct result of Republicans in Congress driven by cynical careerism, nothing else.
8
Most frightening was Trump's attack on the FBI, referring to the leadership as "scum", while Barr smirked.
41
Sadly, nothing new here. We can only hope that repeated disclosures of Trump’s mendacity will sway some voters to vote him out of office.
27
Let's not quibble about facts. If we were meant to know the truth about things, we'd employ our common sense, deductive reasoning, intuitive insight, and smell-test.
Clearly, we're beyond the need for such acumen and wisdom. Rather, we have someone who tells the truth and only the truth in the White House.
6
The fact checking is a necessary task as it is not possible to grant Trump the Principle of Charity as to meaning or that he is practicing the Principle of Cooperation as to the effect of what he says.
Trump poses all the classic game theory social dilemmas, Prisoner, Stag Hunt, Chicken, and Deadlock. Trump is a one trick pony, he evidences an approach that is rate limited by his zero sum game applications to everything. In that, he only employs/knows non cooperative approaches, which can only be self enforced by credible threats. It limits him because he is unable to form alliances that allow for self enforcement, such as rule of law, contracts, multi lateral trade agreements, multi lateral climate agreements.
He is the penultimate real loser because game theory allows players/countries/governance to form commitments that are self enforcing.
A child is aware of this in "cut the cake," A cookie that is to be shared by two proceeds as follows, the first child splits the cookie, the second child gets to choose which half. Trump missed that game as a child.
Further, the teaching of Norman Vincent Peale as evidenced by Trump did not cover the lesson from Sermon on the Mount.
14
You neglected to mention the most misleading claim Trump has made about his acquittal - that he has been exonerated. He has been no more exonerated than any criminal defendant, who is found to be not guilty because the prosecution failed to prove the defendant's guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
22
@Jay Orchard Actually he was acquitted because the overwhelming majority of the Republican Senators refused to listen to ANY evidence of Trump's guilt and prevented witnesses that Trump had prevented from testifying to the House to testify in the Senate, which would have likely provided even more substantially damning evidence of his crimes. This time the jury, under McConnell's threats and direction abrogated their legal responsibility.
Trump has zero interest in truth. Zero. None at all. If it's good for him, he'll occasionally tell the truth. If it's good for him to lie, he will ALWAYS do so. If it's neither good nor bad, he'll lie 50% of the time. Anyone who has spent at least 20 minutes in the last 40 years considering Trump knows this to be accurate.
He has no moral compass. None. He has no capability of emotional understanding, never mind compassion or empathy. His mind is empty of any noble sentiments or any love or care for anyone else.
Republicans know these things. They also know that when Trump spoke to Zelensky, the clear communication was that Ukraine would get no support from the US until they announced an "investigation" of Joe Biden, for Trump's personal benefit. They know that Trump, having gotten this, would then have spent the next year going on about how "his people" are telling him terrible things about Biden and the Democrats (even though he would have heard no such things), and that Trump would have spun all this into crazy "deep state" conspiracy nonsense.
Republicans know that Trump's base would then have swallowed this nonsense whole. They know he committed acts for which he should be impeached (and many more than he was charged with), and yet they did nothing, out of fear, cowardice, and greed. This is how lying and propaganda become institutionalized. It is happening here.
37
Conservative Republicans think either the media is lying when they say Trump is being misleading, exaggerating, or making false statements. Or they shrug it off and say that that Trump's little white lies don't really hurt anyone and are intended to upset Democrats, and that they aren't really serious enough to trouble the conscience.
I want to know how they feel about their Republican Senators having broken one of the Ten Commandments by bearing false witness in the impeachment trial. They know he was wrong to have broken the law but were corrupted by peer pressure. The silent majority of the Republican party used to have more courage, even if they were for the war in Vietnam and against civil rights for African Americans. They were at least honest about their views. The Senate was dishonest.
25
This is the problem: Trump and his repub cronies tell lies with a few words. Then "fact checkers" need paragraphs to debunk the lies and tell what the truth is.
Here's a clue: Trump and all repubs have learned that lying is better than the truth. Their uneducated followers believe every word they say, especially when the Repub propaganda network and other right wing entertainers repeat those lies day in and day out for years on end. Their uneducated followers can barely read (like trump himself) so they are not about to try reading "fact checks." It is just too much for them. So they are satisfied to hear the lies which re-enforce their ignorant beliefs and just go on living in ignorance.
19
I am so tired of the way the press tippy toes around the blatantly false claims the President continuously makes.
Time to stop using words like “falsely claims” and “misrepresented” when the President is clearly trying to misrepresent facts in an attempt to deceive the American people.
Time for the headlines to read, “President Trump lied again”.
29
After Trump was appointed by the electoral college he could have investigated Burisma. But true to form he didn't care about Ukraine until he thought Joe Biden might have a shot at beating him. Again in true Donald Trump fashion, he enlisted his mobsters to help him out. An incredibly sad time for our great Nation.
22
It’s ridiculous that Trump should attack Schiff for misquoting him. Trump blocked all evidence and witness testimony from those who were present during the call. As I understand it, the “transcript” was just a summarizing document the whitehouse cooked up after the investigation had begun, not a word-for-word account of what exactly was said.
Trump is guilty as charged.
26
I just assume everything trump says is a lie, and am happy when it's only an exaggeration! He is pathological, but his supporters eat this stuff up and traffic in the same pathology.
We've come a long way since de Gaulle famously claimed, during the Cuban missile crises, that "...The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me." With trump, we need not worry that any sane leader would take his word for anything.
75
@Mark
An exaggeration is an incorrect representation of a fact. Technically incorrect= a lie. But why quibble? Our Republican leadership is just not taking about the disastrous changes to our professional bureaucracy that affect our health and well being as citizens. Even the Library of Congress is permitted to remove material that is part of our history. We must wake up. I hope it isn't too late. Global warming doesn't care about politics.
12
At the National Prayer Breakfast Trump again used the "royal we" in referring to himself. It is laughable that so many Republicans continue to deny with a straight face that Trump was not asking Zelensky for a personal favor in exchange for military aid on July 25th.
65
@EMiller
Many Republican senators have acknowledged that Trump in fact did indisputably ask for the favor in exchange for military aid. They voted to acquit while saying that Trump did what he was accused of, but that the actions don't rise to the level of removal for office.
The fact that Trump is now claiming (again) total exoneration when the facts of the situation are anything but isn't surprising to me. I don't think it's surprising to the likes of Alexander and Collins, either. Surely they must have known that their nuance would be erased by Trump's inevitable bluster, and that the predominant narrative would be exoneration.
And once again, the incurious, bored American electorate will largely not understand the nuance, taking the headline of exoneration and concluding that everything Trump said about being persecuted, subject to witch hunt, etc, is all also accurate.
We're an embarrassing population. Decadent, over-stimulated, uncritical. Maybe Trump is who we actually deserve, because he represents who we really are, collectively.
15
@Rob Ware
The truth in your reply chills me to the bone. I am a Canadian boomer with a winter home in AZ. I fear for the future of the well being of the entirety of Humanity. The USA under Trump continues to sink lower into what increasingly looks to me like Russian lies and misinformation coming directly out of his pal in the Kremlin. Putin is pulling the strings on his asset who protested "No puppet...you're the puppet" sounding just like an eight year old defending his obviously pathetic lie. Too many Americans believe what they want to but the truth will surely come with a vengeance they are not expecting. POTUS is a severely flawed and totally Putin owned unwitting Russian asset.
3
Hasn't this President been prone to exaggeration all along? It is interesting that no one really questions the glaring nepotism in the White House. It is also noted that the Trumps are first to point at others as "corrupt." Our country has become a modified Dictatorship. Should artists design a uniform for the Trumps and the GOP, just to make it clearer for the rest of us that believe in Democracy?
Alfred J. Quiroz
Professor Emeritus of Art
University of Arizona
53
@Alfred J. Quiroz " It is also noted that the Trumps are first to point at others as "corrupt.""
This is a very effective tactic. Trump pretty much admits he is corrupt, but he just lies about corruption in others to get that out in public, then points news stories repeating his lies and says "see, every one is corrupt, so what's the problem?"
11